Cognitive Neuroscience of Declarative and Nondeclarative Memory

摘要: The study of memory within cognitive neuroscience is an attempt to synthesize an account of both the fundamental mnemonic component processes and the neural basis of these processes. This approach generally takes a very broad definition of memory to include any changes within the brain that reflect long-term storage of new information. This broad definition not only encompasses traditional definitions of memory, the conscious acquisition and recollection of facts and events, but also brings a range of additional phenomena into the memory domain, for example, skill learning, perceptual learning, eyeblink conditioning, and even plasticity in the aplysia gill withdrawal reflex (eg, Milner, Squire, & Kandel 1998). All of these types of memory depend on changes (plasticity) within identifiable brain regions and networks. From this perspective, the fundamental questions of memory are to identify the mechanisms of plasticity, the representations of stored information, and the methods by which these changes influence subsequent behavior. The most well-studied and complex memory system of the brain is based on the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a neural system that contains the hippocampus and surrounding cortical areas. It is this system that, when lesioned in the patient HM, led to profound selective loss of the ability to acquire new memories for facts and events (Scoville & Milner, 1957). This phenomenon of anterograde amnesia resulting from MTL damage has been extensively studied since the first report of patient HM (see Squire, 1992 for a review). In addition, studies of these patients have identified a number of memory phenomena that …